Starbook (6 page)

The prince made his way home through a forest that bristled with prying eyes. When he got back to the village he noticed the silence in the air. He had not heard the silence before, and it puzzled him. He noticed the shadows that hung over the huts and abodes. He hadn't seen them before. He also noticed that between all things, between the trees, between the huts, between the walls and the gates, there were indistinguishable forms, like invisible beings investing the air with wavy shapes, that he had never noticed before. All this troubled him.

Then he saw something new on the faces of the people of the kingdom, the faces of the men, women and children who greeted him on the way to the palace. And what he saw was something that wasn't there before, something that even the people didn't know they had on their faces. It was something akin to the shadow of doom. The prince hurried on, in apprehension.

In the palace he summoned the elders to the presence of the king and asked to be taken to the shrines, to the oracles. He wanted to consult the diviners, the soothsayers. He wanted to be told about the guardian spirits of the kingdom. He wanted to know the disposition of the gods and the mood of the ancestors. He wanted to know the legends and genealogies and the origin of monsters, of shadow forms, of spirits, of evil beings, and of the forces that warred against the welfare of the kingdom. He wanted to know the origin of evil in the world. And the king roared with laughter as he listened to the requests of his son ...

The elders protested at how much the young prince was, with his perfectly reasonable, but slightly unseasonable requests, wasting their time. They should, they said, be deliberating on important matters of state.

'Like what?' roared the king.

'Like collecting taxes ...'

The king bellowed with laughter.

'And what else?'

The elders enumerated items of significant state concern.

'But you never discuss these things at all,' the king said, sternly. 'You squabble endlessly, you exchange wise but useless proverbs, you engage in excellent subtleties of reasoning, you endlessly postpone coming to a decision about anything, you waste the time with slippery words in which your meanings cannot be understood, in which your positions or attitudes cannot be detected, you are always waiting to see which way the wind blows, always protecting your interests and ensuring your continued presence on the council of elders, you spend the time doing profitable business with one another, advancing your privileges, acquiring wives, furthering the interests of your children, families and tribes... In fact can you remember the last time you came to a collective decision about anything?'

'Many times, your majesty,' cried one elder.

'Name one, then,' replied the king.

There was silence. Then the elders consulted among themselves. They consulted a long time and soon began to squabble in low voices. The king roared with his characteristic laughter, and said:

'You see! The decisions that are taken happen by themselves in the very mouth of the crisis. So don't complain about the request of the prince. He is my heir, and future king. His request is legitimate. Do what he asks.'

The elders turned and stared at the prince. He looked upon them innocently, and noticed that there were signs on their faces that he could not read. They asked for some time in which to prepare themselves, but the prince said it had to be now. There was no time, he said. It was urgent. So they adjourned to the council rooms and they told him, one by one, as in a ritual chorus, the genealogy of monsters, the origin of evil beings, the permutations of dark forms. They took him to the shrines, and consulted the oracles, gained signs about the disposition of the gods and the mood of the ancestors, and were told conflicting myths about the origin of evil in the world.

The oracles were bewildering in what they said. The world is upside-down, has turned on its axis, the people live in a dream, and death has come to wake them up in long lines of ants that walk into the seas. The kingdoms do not look out, do not see. The outside world comes with fire and blinding light, in silence, bearing new words that will destroy old worlds. A dream of chains, a trick that makes people two in magic glasses, young lions raided, villages with nests destroyed, war dances silenced, gods in flames, ancestors forgotten, an earthquake in which the earth does not quake but the people are made dumb for a hundred and forty years, a new sun that rises from the red river in time, and after the exodus of hope and dreams a people made new with the fire of the gods, made new and beautiful and aware and gifted, blessed. But only after the years in the wilderness, and after the songs of the dead, and after the lamentation of flowers, and after the rebirth of rivers, and the reuniting of brothers and sisters across the great seas of life and death.

These things the oracle uttered.

The disposition of the gods was more oblique.

They stand on the edge of burning stars, the heavens are not reflected on earth, darkness comes between their messages and our eyes, lost is the way handed down to you by your wise ancestors who came from elsewhere bringing wisdom and guidance to the new heaven, gone are the gold-makers. Find the masters of the tradition. The gods stand in harmony in the centre of the source, but we have lost the lantern.

The mood of the ancestors was obscure. They spoke, but in a language the diviners could not understand. They sang, but the interpreters could not hear the words, nor could they hear the music.

The prince fell asleep amid all this confusion, and was borne lightly to his bed. That night the dark forms, the shadows over the huts, and the invisible beings in between things came to him. They paid him a visit in his sleep. The ancestors spoke to him in songs and dances that were like words. The gods appeared to him and showed him signs and indications that baffled him. Briefly, in a flash, he was shown the origin of evil in the world. On a higher plane an angel had disobeyed the supreme being; and man, high in the scheme of things, disobeyed too and lost his vigilance, and broke the axis of heaven. And in order to create a higher state for all men, he descended into unreality, preyed on by the disobedient angel and his gang of higher spirits. And the prince saw that evil was ignorance, was darkness, and was confined only to the earth and the lower spheres of the universe.

He saw that evil was related only to mortality and the lowly souls. Beyond the lower spheres the prince saw that all was light. He saw that evil served its function, which was to provide the opposition needed for the light to grow, and keep growing; for there can be no good without evil, no light without darkness, day without night. But the destination of the soul was beyond good and evil, darkness and light, beyond it all. Evil was the ladder by which the difficult ascension was made. Evil was not the only way for the ascension, for the ascension was simpler by grace, goodness, love and natural flight – but evil was the one thing that humanity, in its blindness, was prey to, must overcome, transcend, and turn into light. Evil was a battle or a non-battle which humanity must win and overcome consciously in itself if it is to regain its former place, or find a new place, in heaven.

The prince was shown all this and understood it all in a flash, and much more besides. And what the ancestors said to him in songs, in music and in dances he absorbed but forgot, and would remember much later, in time, when needed, and when events so terrible would spring them out in his mind as his own thoughts, his own deeds.

But that night the visitations he attracted from the evil forms (to see them is to be seen by them), the shadows over things (they go where they must grow), and the ambiguous beings between things (if the space is there they fill up the air; if the space is not light, they grow there in might) – the visitations were so strong that they troubled the prince's sleep.

They occupied the prince's dreams because he was an open soul and gave all things habitation, and was not yet strong enough or fortified enough to resist such inhabitation. For this possession was part of the ritual fortification. First the soul must be infected with that which it will become impervious to; if it survives the attack, the foundation becomes impregnable; if it doesn't, a good person perishes, and has to begin again from where they left off the struggle. So it was with the prince.

The dreams he had were monstrous. The evil forms that visited him and the shadows over things that descended on him and the visions of the night were so terrible that a great unease entered his spirit. His dreams were mixed and confusing; and monsters with teeth all over their bodies appeared beside him and began to eat of his flesh, till only his heart remained. Liverish spirits with snake-like legs and eyes that reflected what they saw and bodies crawling with white worms slid into him and danced and wriggled in his being. A host of evil-looking critters took up occupation in his brain and held long meetings about how to conquer the kingdom of his soul.

And then he saw unspeakable acts of witchcraft and dark cultic activities – power-seekers who ate the brains of newborn babies, women who poisoned their husbands and married their brothers, men who murdered their wives and buried them in farmlands, warriors who beheaded the conquered and danced at night with their skulls under a luminous moon. The prince saw so much evil and he was the home of so many kinds of nightmare beings that he became ill. He fell into a deep illness because of all the evils in the kingdom that he was shown in his dreams. All the hidden evils affected him so powerfully that he slid into a profound sickness that lasted a long time.

Everyone thought he was going to die. He didn't eat. He didn't speak. And he barely stirred from his bed. He seemed unconscious for a long time and when he appeared to be awake he stared at the ceiling or at the sky for long hours without seeming to see anything. They said that his soul had fled from the home of his body and that his eyes longed for some place beyond the sky. He saw no one, recognised no one, not even the king.

They brought people to see him in his chamber, friends, beautiful young princesses whom he had been thought to favour, relations, and comedians. He stared through the friends, was deaf to the entreaties of beauty, and did not so much as register the performances of the funniest people in the kingdom. They brought musicians, who played rousing tunes, with rich rhythmed drumbeats that seduced the feet and fingers to joy and dancing, but he did not so much as betray the slightest pulse of rapture. The musicians played the most tender and bewitching melodies, laced with sadness and poignant sorrow, music so moving that palace officials reported that they saw dogs weeping, but not a tear appeared in the eyes of the prince, nor did a muscle move on his impassive face that had surrendered to the greater melodies of dying.

The king didn't laugh as he used to, and wandered thoughtfully and gloomily through the corridors of the palace. The king was never known to be affected by anything under the sun, be it great disaster, defeat in battles, the death of his children, triumphs in statecraft, prosperity in the land, periods of unexpected happiness, sudden invasions; he would laugh uproariously at crises or victories, setbacks or accomplishments. However, this indomitable king was mysteriously subdued by the inexplicable sickness of his fragile son. The king had never really expected the prince to last long in this world; and had always reconciled himself to the omens that the prince was doomed to early death, being one of the precious visitors that the gods sent down to dwell for a while among the living, to spy on their hearts, and report on their deeds.

The king had expected him to die in childhood, but the prince survived perilous fevers, melancholies, moods, disappearances, and became an adolescent. Then the king expected that early youth would claim the prince unexpectedly, one morning, without warning. But the prince not only thrived but grew strong, and took on challenging tasks, and worked on the farms like the ordinary people of the land. The king found much to laugh at, but none more than the quiet defiance of death that his son had shown every day. And when the prince began to take such a profound interest in the deeper matters of life and the kingdom, the king was delighted, and all things conspired to make him laugh at the mystery of things, for laughter was his way of breathing, of thinking and nonthinking. He had been laughing at life since he was young. But behind his laughter lay a deep and grave soul that saw deeply into the heart of mysteries.

The king pondered much on the strange sickness of his son, and he ruled the kingdom with a slightly abstracted air. His wives found him a trifle mentally preoccupied and his advisers refrained from breaking into his long silences and vacant stares. The king would come and sit for long periods in the prince's chamber and watch his sleeping son. He remembered how, on the day his son was born, the diviners had said the alignment of the stars was especially auspicious and yet enigmatic. It was as if, they said, the heavens couldn't make up their mind whether they were announcing a great occasion or a strange event. There were enigmas among the stars. A white horse was said to have appeared in the village square with a golden horn in the middle of its forehead. A great cry was heard from the oracle and a message was brought to the king which said:

'That which is best will be lost so that that which is greatest can be found.'

The shrines were swarmed by white birds and a rare animal caught in a net was seen staring out with calm eyes near the palace. Some say it was a white tiger. Seven meteors, falling stars, were seen at dusk; and a bright burst of golden light flashed in the middle of the night and alarmed the wise ones of the kingdom. But all around the palace musicians were playing and women were singing their praises and prayers for the newborn prince. The king remembered how favoured his son had been at birth with the love of the people, especially the women. They had an instinct about the prince even before his arrival, as his coming had been whispered to them in their dreams, by their inscrutable goddesses.

The king, listening now to musicians playing gentle airs outside the chamber, reminisced about his own youth, and about the prince's mother, whom he loved and still loved above all others in the world; and thoughts of her filled him with a sweet sorrow that made him laugh tenderly to himself. When she was dying the queen had said to the king:

'This son of ours will need great support on the other side if he is going to fulfil his destiny. I will give him all the support and strength he needs. Tell him to think of me when he is in trouble and I will move heaven to help him. As for you, my love, I am always in your heart, I am your happiness, and so always laugh and never dwell in sorrow about anything. We have been great companions on the path together, and we know the glories of the mountaintop, so be joyful, and be a great king and an even greater man. We will be in dreams together.'

But more characteristic of her were her words:

'My dear,' she said, with a smile, 'the day's harvest has been done. Maybe I'll cook you something special. You'd like that, wouldn't you,' she whispered, and then she was gone.

The king didn't like to think about the death of his wife. Not because of the infinite sadness, but because he didn't believe she was gone. He laughed often because she was there, here, in the palace, all over the kingdom. She had simply taken on a vaster personality and grown in space and time.

But in his son, sleeping or dying of a malaise without a name, the king found much by which to be troubled. So many prophecies hung on the life of his son. If he dies before a certain age, the kingdom will perish. If the sun doesn't rise from the river at the death of a monster, the prince will perish. If the land doesn't give up its evils and load them in chains on the back of the prince, the kingdom will perish. If the prince is not lost and does not return, the kingdom will perish. If those who are made slaves in the land of white spirits never become free, the kingdom will perish. If the white spirits do not become human beings and purge the world of the evils they have unleashed, the world will perish. If the prince does not fulfil his obscure destiny no one will fulfil their simple destiny, and the land will perish. So many prophecies. If the king stops laughing hope will vanish from the kingdom, and the people will perish. So many responsibilities.